Dear Obama administration: You’re welcome. Love, Fracking.

posted at 8:01 pm on September 3, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

Leastaways, that’s what the highly useful drilling technique known as fracking would say, if fracking was somehow personified and could talk.

As I mentioned the other day, hydraulic fracturing on state and private lands has been largely responsible for the United States’ recent oil-and-gas boom, which in turn has largely been responsible for helping the U.S. to achieve a reduction in the trade deficit that President Obama has so loftily included as one of his economic goals in trying to double U.S. exports. In that same vein, the oil-and-gas boom also recently helped to revise upward the estimates for our (still pitifully slow) economic growth:

Almost entirely on the back of stronger exports, last week the U.S. Commerce Department revised upward its economic growth estimate for the second quarter, from 1.7 to 2.5 percent. Exports from April to June grew at their fastest pace in two years, pushing down the U.S. trade deficit to 2.7 percent of gross domestic product. That’s less than half what it was at its peak of around 6 percent of GDP in late 2005.

Most of the boost in exports came from tangible stuff sold abroad: goods, rather than services. The biggest among them were petroleum products refined from all the crude oil the U.S. is producing—unlocked by fracking. Through June, the U.S. has exported an average of 99 million barrels of petroleum each month over the past year. That’s roughly quadruple the amount the U.S. was exporting a decade ago. …

The big question is whether the U.S. can continue to expand its economy while also shrinking its trade deficit—something it hasn’t been able to do for a generation or more. The U.S. will start exporting natural gas at some point over the next few years. That could be the clincher.

No kidding. The White House is eager to credit Obama’s energy policies with oil-and-gas’s success, but the truth is that the boom has been largely extracurricular to President Obama’s economic agenda and a saving grace to which they don’t really like to devote too much attention. Indeed, his administration is still consciously limiting the permitting and access for which energy companies and lawmakers are clamoring, and despite their reluctant and cautious praise for natural gas, they’re still taking their sweet time with allowing for more natural-gas exports while energy companies are left twiddling their thumbs in frustration. I don’t prescribe to some imagined need to balance out the U.S. trade deficit for its own sake, but I am all about the free trade as a means to economic growth — and the Obama administration continues to retard the one substantive economic boon they’ve got going for them.

Our city council has voted an ordinance that would make fracking illegal, subject to fines, and jail. And will not issue any permits in this city…which rests on top of a major oil field dating back over a century.

Now the city is pushing the county commissioners to do likewise.

The State of Ohio has served notice to our fair city that the State may initiate legal action as this city ordinance is in violation of current state law.

Three nearby counties have welcomed fracking. Guess where the help wanted signs are posted?

It’s more of an immediate embarrassment to Democrats at the regional level who plan on running in the 2014 midterms, since Obama can take credit for economic growth (or what there is of it) while treating the specific cause — fracking — like the crazy uncle locked in the basement when he goes before his party’s hardcore special interests on the East and West coasts, who still want him to kill the Keystone pipeline. He can keep kicking that down the road, but state politicians don’t have it as easy.

John Hickenlooper in Colorado’s already chugged fracking fluid to try and show he’s not part of his party’s bi-coastal environmental fanatics, since the northeastern part of his state and the western edge are part of the current drilling boom. But what of Wendy Davis down in Texas? The same bi-coastal crowd that’s opening up their wallets to her over her stand on late-term abortions are the ones who think ‘Gasland’ is the most accurate and alarming documentary ever. They’d get the non-hydrocarbon vapors if their new heroine came out in support of fracking next year while running for governor, but if she pleases her out-of-state donors by questioning the use of the drilling method, Davis would lose even more voters in Texas than she’s already done with her militant abortion stance.

Almost entirely on the back of stronger exports, last week the U.S. Commerce Department revised upward its economic growth estimate for the second quarter, from 1.7 to 2.5 percent. Exports from April to June grew at their fastest pace in two years, pushing down the U.S. trade deficit to 2.7 percent of gross domestic product. That’s less than half what it was at its peak of around 6 percent of GDP in late 2005.

2.5% would have to stand for any of the interpretive commentary to mean anything at all.

You know, compared to who’s got his feet up on the Resolution Desk in the Oval Office right now, a guy who has animated conversations with the hatrack in his office about the Universe inside his Underoos doesn’t sound so bad.

Heck, most Americans would probably be OK with Boehner as the de facto acting President. The way he smokes, it’s not like he’ll be around much longer, anyway.

The moral being, if you’re going to use dimbulbs as insurance, it helps if you are at least a little smarter than they are.